Just what, exactly? Well, I read a comment recently that ...
ESD is education that addresses the inter-relatedness of social justice, ecological integrity and economics
Oh, how I wish it did, but the sort of ESD that I usually come across (or read and hear about) never seems to do this. Rather, most of those who espouse or promote ESD know little about economics, and teach less. If it is there at all, economics usually comes to the party dressed as politics, and then is often just a caricature that's positive (usually socialist – huzzar!), or negative (usually neoliberal – boo!), according to taste.
And anyway, the phrase doesn't really work: social justice and ecological integrity are values and desired universal global social outcomes, whereas economics is a discipline and a process – often, it should be said, quite a political one. However, if education actually did set out to explore ...
"the inter-relatedness of social justice and ecological integrity through economics"
then we might be getting somewhere, especially as the exploring of the inter-relatedness of these issues through economics is exactly the process of everyday politics and government — and hence is citizenly. This seems much needed when the continuing existences of poverty and the processes of ecological disintegration are fundamentally political (policy) choices that we make – using economics to bring them about. As Steve Gough once said, there seems nothing more sustainable than poverty.
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